These dudes lack basic technique & strategy but I'd still be impressed if an "internal" practitioner could handle this degree of competition.

what about all the clips of those here who do competition events they dont count?

They're good in my book. I've seen a handful of comp clips posted by members here but never commented on them before. Props to anybody who has the guts to rise to the competition. Seems like some folks are on a search for this holy grail of a fight where an "internal master" is able to go in a full contact venue and demonstrate tossing his opponent around like a rag doll.

Now, I don't have much more than a basic proficiency of internal power (I can use it in mma style sparring but I still fail more attempts than I succeed) but one thing is clear: with the amount of time/effort it takes to develop internal skills, somebody who is interested in competing to win could achieve their goal with better methods. For instance, take somebody who wants to compete full contact at the age of 18. Let's say they even have 10 yrs of martial arts (karate/tae kwon do or judo/bjj) under their belt along with 4 years of wrestling in high school. If they started training internal methods at age 18 before they took their first full contact fight, they would have dozens (20-30) of fights before internal would even begin to start to show results, assuming they stay in the game that long.

In conclusion, internal practice can be about applied fisticuffs after sufficient cultivation & sparring experience but one doesn't get better at fighting without practicing fighting. There is a bigger picture to the training in understanding how one human relates to another human.

As an example of a "fight" this is better than what was posted for the Wu vs Chan "fight"... to my eye, looks very much like two big, experienced guys putting some real effort into coming out on top. Technically, I would say Huang comes off better but there's also no way of knowing how much was edited out of the original footage to make one side look better or worse.

I still am surprised how often recreational martial artists who look at this or similar footage will say "That's not mastery; where's the beautiful techniques!"

On the other hand, as a taiji practitioner this doesn't make me cringe when I watch it like the Wu vs Chan clip.

GrahamB wrote:I've asked the Internet for this from day one, but is there any video anywhere of somebody actually using decent/good/accepted IP skills (or whatever you want to call it - 6 harmonies movement, internal, etc) against somebody genuinely attacking them in a non-cooperative way?

Whenever there's a video of Tai Chi people fighting sanda it gets called 'kick/punch boxing' or whatever. I'm not intersted in limited rule-set push hands videos either. Just an actual fight/spar with resistance.

Contrast this to people fighting with, say, Karate, Tae Kwon do, Judo, BJJ, Wing Chun - there definitely are videos of them actually fighting people in a recognisable way.

Yet there are no videos accepted by the majority that are representative of XingYi Bagua or Taiji.

I was told master wu was sent to yang shao hou to learn (as a few other wu jian chuan were) but yang shao hou did not teach him the gong and application form as hoped. But what he did pass on led to the changes in the wu family form that he passed on.Anyone heard anything similar?

GrahamB wrote:I've asked the Internet for this from day one, but is there any video anywhere of somebody actually using decent/good/accepted IP skills (or whatever you want to call it - 6 harmonies movement, internal, etc) against somebody genuinely attacking them in a non-cooperative way?

Whenever there's a video of Tai Chi people fighting sanda it gets called 'kick/punch boxing' or whatever. I'm not interested in limited rule-set push hands videos either. Just an actual fight/spar with resistance.

Contrast this to people fighting with, say, Karate, Tae Kwon do, Judo, BJJ, Wing Chun - there definitely are videos of them actually fighting people in a recognisable way.

Yet there are no videos accepted by the majority that are representative of XingYi Bagua or Taiji.

IMO if you can’t use or practice “internal power” effectively in friendly sparring, how will you use it when your life depends on it?

Why are all these threads from months/years ago suddenly popping up on the forum?

Don't want to go back and read it all again, so will just look at this one in isolation as it's got my name on it...

So, yes, this is a genuine 'sparring with resistance' video. However, it's also not very good, is it? The XingYi guy clearly doesn't do this very often, if at all. So, I don't think it qualifies as an actual example of an internal art/power/strength used in sparring...or does it? Maybe this is how it looks?